DIRTY TRICKS

Product Description

"Hilarious (and decidedly naughty)" --The Daily Telegraph (U.K.)
"Thriller with a sharply comic edge" --The Mirror (U.K.)

Martin Clunes in an award-winning black comedy seen on BBC America

Part bawdy bedroom farce, part zany crime caper, this saucy British romp stars Martin Clunes (Doc Martin, Men Behaving Badly) as a charming underachiever on the run from the law. Sure, he’s manipulative, moneygrubbing, and completely amoral. But is he a murderer? Absolutely not, he insists--despite the pesky corpses piling up.

After befriending an accountant (Neil Dudgeon, Life of Riley, Midsomer Murders), he beds the man’s randy wife, Karen (Julie Graham, At Home with the Braithwaites), before a wealthy widow (Lindsay Duncan, Traffik, Alice in Wonderland) next catches his eye. When Karen meets an untimely demise, a plodding police detective (James Bolam, New Tricks, Beiderbecke trilogy) gets involved, and things take a decidedly dicey turn.

Winner of an International Emmy® for best drama and based on the book by Michael Dibdin (the Aurelio Zen mysteries), Dirty Tricks sends up modern marriage and mores with wit as crisp and intoxicating as the best British gin.

Contains nudity, strong language, and graphic sexual situations

Amazon.com

Martin Clunes is one of the unlikeliest, and most borderline likable, heroes to grace the small screen. And for Dirty Tricks, that's a very good thing. Dirty Tricks, a BBC two-episode murder mystery/bedroom farce, is based on a novel by Michael Dibdin. And much of Dibdin's intricate plotting and splendid dialogue makes it into the screenplay intact--resulting in a very witty, if wince-inducing, comedy.

Dirty Tricks is not for the squeamish, nor for young audiences, as the sexual high jinks are depicted very explicitly. And due to a series of unfortunate events, dead bodies tend to pile up around our hero, Edward (Clunes). So the peculiarly British point of view of Dirty Tricks is that Edward is extremely distasteful and reprehensible--but not a murderer. Or is he?

One of the best things about Dirty Tricks is its very complex plotting. Dirty Tricks works very well as a murder mystery, but it's also layered against a backdrop of the bleakest, blackest humor imaginable. Clunes is dependably entertaining, and so is the rest of the cast. Other standouts include veteran British TV actress Julie Graham as Karen, the seducing hottie who gets Edward started down the wrong path. The ensemble also includes James Bolam, Neil Dudgeon, George Potts, and Henry Goodman--all splendid and slightly sordid. Any fans of British crime dramas--and veddy naughty sex romps--will find a lot to love in these Dirty Tricks. --A.T. Hurley